


albedo

by badskeletonpuns



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/F, F/M, Kissing, Outer Space, Reflections on Home, Triptych, as in the art form, post-hephaestus au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 08:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11180946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/pseuds/badskeletonpuns
Summary: al·be·doNOUN"the proportion of light reflected from a planet or a moon"that light in your eyes when you look at me, that light in my heart when you hold me close and promise we'll be okayMy other entry for the Wolf 359 Big Bang 2017!





	1. pt i

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [ambience](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8580844) by [badskeletonpuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/pseuds/badskeletonpuns). 



> this is inspired by/a companion piece to 'ambience', but either can be read without the other and still make sense. art links will be added when the art is posted!

Isabel Lovelace has been awake for more than twenty four hours, and the headache that had been pounding inside her head for hours has finally settled into a dull ache. Her right arm is what's really bothering her now, the negative space of what used to be the lower half of it sparking and tingling like she laid on it for too long and it's just asleep.   
   
The wound itself is numb, cauterized and cleanly bandaged.   
   
She could maybe sleep now, if she tried.   
   
Sleep. It's not sleep, she doesn't know why the three of them call it that, because being frozen in the cryopods is no gentle embrace. It’s so cold it burns - harsh and immediate, all over. If Lovelace had been in charge of the metaphors, she'd have called it death.   
   
Except she wouldn't, because she's been down that road already, seen that particular ending page, and- well.   
   
She's not a fan.   
   
(Isabel Lovelace has faced Death as a scientist with cold gray eyes who made medical samples out of everyone she loved, she has faced it as the suffocating nothingness that exists in the spaces between the stars, and she has faced it in the form of a man with a gun and the smell of her own blood in the air, and she has laughed in its face every time.)  
      
So she doesn't do the cryosleep thing unless she absolutely has to.  
   
Which she does, she _knows_ she does, and no matter how many times Eiffel and Minkowski try to explain how important it is that they spend the right amount of time in it to avoid aging to death, she will never know it any more than she already does.   
   
The pod itself catches her eye in the corner of the tiny main room on the escape pod they'd rigged up. Its minimalistic steel lines and pastel detailing is unobtrusive, nonthreatening. They only have the one - Eiffel’s in it now, cold and blue and still as Snow White in her glass case.  
   
Across the room, Minkowski is floating at the head of their tiny ship. She's focused, calm, eyes flicking from target to target. They're still so far from earth, it's not like she really needs to do anything to make sure they stay on track at this point. But Lovelace understands the need to do something, anything at all to stave off the shrinking walls and the depleting food supplies and the memories of the ships they'd left behind.   
   
She rubs her upper arm, almost unconsciously. It hurts to press down too close to the end of it, but it's a good hurt. Like pressing on a bruise, the knowledge that what's under the skin is bloody and raw but alive and healing.   
   
Still, she should probably leave it alone. At least once a “day” she catches herself trying to grab things with a hand she no longer has. She'll get used to it eventually.   
   
In a concerted effort to avoid thinking about that ever-waiting icy grave or her arm or anything, really, that had happened on the Hephaestus before they'd left, Lovelace’s eyes settle on Minkowski.  
   
The commander is magnetic, red hair coming loose from her bun and swirling around her face in the absence of gravity to weigh it down. She's still just as sure and competent as ever, even in the face of losing over half of her original crew and gaining only Lovelace, whatever the hell she is now.   
   
(Lovelace feels human enough, she has to be human enough. Those alien bastards can suck whatever they have for dicks before she'll ever admit to herself the possibility of her being anything like them.)  
   
That line of thought is useless to try and follow, and so Lovelace gives up on maintaining a professional silence and pulls herself the short distance over to Minkowski.   
   
“Need any help, commander?” she asks, casual like this is nothing more than another day of Wacky Space Hijinks on the Hephaestus.   
   
Minkowski doesn't need help, but this is the way things are. These are the conversations they have, meaningless bits and routines that barely hold them all together. The ship still flies, and the three of them are still alive.   
   
“I think I've got this under control, Lovelace, but thank you. I wouldn't mind some company, though?” Minkowski leaves her statement open, letting Lovelace decide whether to continue the conversation.  
   
Here is the part where she should say something like Option A: “Thanks, Minkowski, but no thanks. Not feeling up to conversation.” Or Option B: “Lots of stars out today.” (Lots of stars out _every_ day.) Those are the easy answers. Simple. Less painful.   
   
Lovelace doesn't say either of those things. She just tilts her head forward till it's set against Minkowski’s back, and listens to her friend breathe. Minkowski inhaled a lot of smoke dragging Lovelace away from the explosion, and Lovelace can hear it now in a sickening snap-crackle-wheeze at the end of Minkowski’s breaths. “This sucks,” Lovelace says, letting her own breath gust down across Minkowski’s back.   
   
Renée Minkowski is in a grimy white tank top and her jumpsuit rolled down and tied at the waist, and Lovelace can't pretend she doesn't find her beautiful. Her breath leaves goosebumps along the skin of Minkowski’s back bared by the undershirt.   
   
Minkowski's quiet. For a second Lovelace thinks she isn't going to say anything at all - or worse, she'll say something stupidly optimistic. Instead, the former commanding officer of the Hephaestus sighs, and turns to look at the other former commanding officer of the Hephaestus.   
   
“Yeah,” Minkowski says. And then again, quieter. “Yeah.”   
   
Lovelace is about to talk again when Minkowski opens her mouth, breathes in. Her lips are set and determined, but when she reaches past Lovelace’s head to flip a switch above her, her hands shake.   
   
“I can barely remember the explosion, but every time I close my eyes I see Maxwell staring at me. Her eyes… she knew I was going to shoot her. She knew I wasn't bluffing. That whole time, every goddamn second, Kepler and Jacobi never thought I could pull the trigger. She knew, though.” Minkowski takes a moment to collect herself, get her voice back under control. She doesn’t look at Lovelace again, turns back to stare at the dials and switches of the shuttle. Lovelace doesn't interrupt or try to pull Minkowski back to face her. This is the first time Minkowski has ever mentioned aloud how they got off that hellship. The napalm and the guns and Hera, _god, Hera, I’m so sorry._ Any of it.   
   
“I knew you would do it,” Lovelace says when the silence after Minkowski’s words gets too heavy to bear.   
   
Minkowski doesn't smile at her, and her grip on the console in front of her is one of white-knuckled intensity. “I didn't.”   
   
Lovelace doesn’t have a response to that, doesn’t know how to tell Minkowski that no one knows that fact until they’re looking down the sights of their gun. What she does know, though, is that she and Eiffel stayed alive at least a little longer thanks to Minkowski’s actions, and that at least she can tell her. “You know Eiffel and I are here because of you, right? That asshole needed to know we were just as serious as he was.”   
   
“I know,” Minkowski says with a sigh, the words riding on her gust of breath. “Knowing doesn’t make the nightmares go away, though.”   
   
It’s at times like this that Lovelace occasionally wishes she was in that icebox instead of Eiffel. He’d never admit it out loud, but he’s definitely the best out of the three of them at the whole emotions thing. At least in regards to other people’s emotions. His own are a different story, but you can’t have everything.  
   
Eiffel’s not here, though, and Lovelace is a big girl who can suck it up and talk about feelings like the best of them when she tries. “That's the only good thing about cryo for me. I never dream in there.” She doesn't admit that she never really sleeps, either, just stays caught in that moment where all sounds are muffled save for the rush of her own blood in her ears and the sharp bite of cold lasting until someone opens the container and she can can get up.   
   
Minkowski shakes her head. “Lucky.”   
   
Between the frying pan and the fire, Lovelace really wouldn't consider either of them lucky. She doesn't say that; she knows Minkowski does not need a cynist at this moment.   
   
The silence yawns between them, like a cat stretching in a beam of sunshine. (Neither of them have seen the sun as more than a single dot of light among billions of others in a long, long time.)  
   
Lovelace returns to the other side of the cabin, pulling herself along the wall with one hand. It's as close to pacing as anyone can get in here. Minkowski at last decides that the controls of the pod don't need her anymore, and pushes off towards their cabinet of freeze dried food packs. She's probably going to count them again, even though at this point Lovelace is certain Minkowski has the number memorized.   
   
They each have their ways of coping.   
   
A shrill beeping starts up from the console. Both Minkowski and Lovelace snap to attention without thinking, searching the ship for the thing going wrong in another round of Name That Disaster! It takes a moment for them to realize it's just the timer for the cryo pod, and that it's time to wake up Eiffel.  
   
He's always the most difficult to wake, always takes the longest to shake the ice off his hands and blink the frost from his eyes.   
   
Tonight, they'll all have dinner together. They aren't all often awake at the same time, and Minkowski likes to take those moments to plan for their return to earth and talk about how they're doing. Lovelace likes to hear the conviction in her voice when she promises that they'll all make it there, likes to hear Eiffel and Minkowski laughing together at some dry-humored joke she made.   
   
After dinner, it'll be her turn in the freezer.   
   
She'll be ready for it.


	2. pt ii

Doug had never met Minkowski’s husband. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if he’d even heard the man’s name until long after the Hephaestus had faded into a bright speck outside the shuttle window.   
   
Maybe he had. He was never great at remembering names like that.   
   
Dominik Koudelka.   
   
He hadn’t been there to meet the three of them when they were released from the hospital, and Minkowski hadn’t said a word about it. She’d just held on to Doug and Lovelace a little tighter. When Doug looked over at her she wasn’t looking at either of them, just searching the crowd like if she just looked a little harder Koudelka would be standing there. Doug didn’t let go of her hand.   
   
The mysterious Koudelka had disappeared, with no explanation and not enough clues for the police to go on. They didn’t close the case - there was no body, and no one was willing to destroy the miraculous Commander Minkowski’s hopes with a verdict like that.   
   
But everyone knew the case had gone cold.   
   
Well, everyone except the three remaining members of the Hephaestus crew. Doug would have believed Lovelace and Minkowski if they told him that they were going to move a mountain. Lovelace’s focus lay on their court case against Goddard, but she was more than willing to help Minkowski find her husband again.   
   
Lovelace hadn’t had anyone to come home to, either.   
   
Doug had thought about trying to find Kate and Anne, but…  
   
He figured his face was on enough screens around the world. If either of them wanted him in their lives, they would have contacted him by this point.   
   
So Minkowski’s husband was basically it for the three of them at this point. Doug really hoped he wouldn’t mind adopting two more adults, because it was highly unlikely he or Lovelace would be willing to go too far from Minkowski any time soon.   
   
Doug liked helping Lovelace with her case, liked the good-natured teasing about how easily he was distracted from whatever document he was supposed to be reading. He liked the smile on Minkowski’s face when one of them found a rare lead towards Koudelka, liked the way she would let Doug and Lovelace convince her to set down the laptop and eat ice cream and make fun of reality shows together. He liked the house that they shared and the way the light came in through the window when he fell asleep on the couch and woke up to Minkowski going on a run at some ungodly time of the morning or Lovelace burning food for the eighty-fourth time.   
   
Doug liked all of it, and he wasn’t expecting anything different on June 16th, a muggy day in the middle of summer. The heat made him drowsy, and even though he knew this was an important meeting he was five seconds away from falling asleep on Minkowski’s shoulder every time he blinked.   
   
He was two seconds from passing out when Minkowski tensed. She sat up, shoulders pressed back against the chair, almost dislodging Doug. He cracked an eye open, attempting to feign sleep. If it was just another middle manager type, he didn’t really want them to convince Minkowski that the three of them should go over more documents to sign.   
   
“Hello there, Renée!” the man said, and he was not a middle manager. Doug had seen enough pictures to recognize the man standing in front of their chairs. He’d also worked for Goddard long enough to recognize their logo, neatly printed on a nametag that said ‘Dominik Koudelka’ but nothing about ‘traitor’ or ‘if this guy is the real Koudelka and he’s going to hurt Minkowski like this I’m going to kill him’.   
   
“Nik,” Minkowski breathed.  
   
He’d never heard Minkowski use a nickname for anyone.  
   
He’d never heard that particular tone in her voice either, not when he was drowning or Hera had been offline and their ship was falling to pieces, not staring down the barrel of Kepler’s gun or in the face of death by plant monster or starvation or suffocation or of any of the myriad tragedies present on the Hephaestus.   
   
Doug stayed very, very still, and thought about how it was probably irrational to hate a man who’d said all of three words in your presence, and how much he didn’t care.   
   
Koudelka made the creepy Goddard version of small talk, and with every sentence Minkowski grew more still, breathing slow and concentrated. Doug risks a glance at her as best he can without opening his eyes, and she’s holding her folders so tightly that the cardstock is wrinkling under her grip.   
   
The rest of the lawyers filed in, and the meeting began. Doug had to sit up and pay attention then, because he knew Minkowski probably wasn’t going to. Or maybe she would, she was far stronger than he was.  
   
Still.   
   
He dropped one of his hands under the table and nudged Minkowski’s arm. She glanced at him, trying for a smile but barely making it into a neutral expression.   
   
She took his hand, holding so tightly it almost hurt. 

On her other side, Lovelace also grabbed her hand.   
   
They got through the meeting together, their lawyers versus Goddard, the three of them versus one man they’ve been hoping to find for so long. Doug had to jot down his (infrequent) notes with his wrong hand, but a little bit of chicken-scratch handwriting was worth it in his opinion.  
   
Koudelka loiters around the conference room even after the other lawyers and liaisons have filed out, tucking papers into binders and humming something under his breath. It sounded like some Disney tune, a movie that came out while the three of them were in space and Koudelka was apparently using his Goddard salary to go see Disney movies.   
   
Doug hadn’t even realized that he had stood until his legs locked up underneath him and he couldn’t take a single step, and Minkowski was walking around him and past the table to stand face to face with her husband. Lovelace remained sitting down, clutching the armrests of her chair like lifelines and glaring at Koudelka.   
   
“Why?”   
   
That was all Minkowski said.   
   
Doug couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move a muscle.   
   
“What else was I supposed to do while you were gallivanting across the universe, darling?” And the asshole _smiled_ when he said it, like it was some sort of inside joke that only he was in on, and Doug wasn’t certain if he’d ever hated anyone as much as he hated this man.   
   
Minkowski punched him in the face, knocking the smug grin away and leaving him bloody-nosed and frowning. Her hands shook, and she turned away without another word. On her way out, she grabbed Doug and Lovelace’s wrists, dragging them after her.   
   
They reached the waiting room without incident, buzzing fluorescent lights and old magazines almost too normal after what they’ve just witnessed.   
   
“I need a minute,” Minkowski said, voice hoarse and stubbornly blinking back what might be tears. “Just wait for me at the car, okay?” She disappeared into the womens’ restroom, and Lovelace stood absolutely still.   
   
“Eiffel, tell me to go out to the car before I break Minkowski’s husband’s nose,” she muttered, and Doug knew that both women were giving him far too much credit in the ‘Is Not Going To Cause Dominik Koudelka Bodily Harm’ department, but he listened anyway.  
   
“Go out the car, Lovelace,” he sighed. “Maybe put on something loud that Minkowski likes?” He almost called her Isabel there. It didn’t feel right, though, not here in this uncomfortably quiet room with its offensively beige decor with Minkowski putting herself back together in a bathroom mirror.   
   
Lovelace nodded, takes a careful, measured breath, and walked outside.   
   
Doug went back into the conference room, because he had never had a bad idea that he didn’t immediately act upon and he wasn’t about to break his streak today.   
   
Koudelka was in there, studying something on his laptop screen. He looked up when Doug walked in, and there’s a couple bloody tissues on the table next to him but the smile is back on his face.   
   
“Hi, Doug!” he said. “Looking for a career opportunity? I know Renée and Isabel are lovely, but they’re far too emotionally involved in this to really understand what’s happening.”  
   
 _There is no way he just said that to me,_ Doug thought.  
   
“Fuck you.”   
   
Koudelka just raised an eyebrow at Doug’s response, and shook his head slightly. “That’s a little uncalled for, don’t you think?”   
   
Doug took a deep breath before he said anything else. He had to organize his thoughts this time, this had to come out right. “How could you do that to her?” spilled out before he could organize any thoughts at all, because it was all he could think. “God, how much money was Minkowski worth to you? What did they have to offer you before you sold her out, you married probably the best human being in this galaxy and you left her behind for goddamn _money!?_ A cushy corporate salary and -”   
   
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Koudelka said, and he closed his laptop. His tone was still that sleek professional one they must teach in How To Be An Evil Goddard Corporate Zombie 101, but it tightened. “You didn’t marry someone who left you on earth for half a chance at the stars, you didn’t see the look in her eyes as she boarded that shuttle and _neither did I_ because she never looked back at me. That woman is strong, yes, brave, yes, all of those wonderful attributes that I am sure you of all people could list, Doug. But she never loved me the same way she loved the stars.”

“That’s a shitty lie and you know it.” Doug had not sat down and wasn’t going to. He was probably looming over Koudelka, probably being really super rude, and he did not care. “Minkowski loved you right up until you turned to the Dark Side and waltzed in here with your suit and your Goddard equipment and then you said her name the same way Cutter does, d’you know that? God, do you have any idea what she went through to get back here? And even after we got back, Minkowski’s been searching for you for that _whole time!_ Would it have killed you to call?”   
   
“Shut up, I heard the goddamn tapes!” Koudelka shoved his chair back, standing abruptly. He shoved Doug backward and there was no smile anywhere on his face.   
   
“You… what? Everyone heard my tapes, they were all over the internet.”   
   
“No one else was married to Renée Minkowski and heard those tapes,” Koudelka spat. “She adored you, Doug, and you do not deserve that adoration. Even if I hadn't ‘gone to the Dark Side’, Renée would have chosen you every time.”  
   
Doug laughed. He couldn't help the reaction, didn't have the words to let Koudelka know just how wrong he was. “You didn't know your wife very well, did you?” are the words he settles for. At that point, Doug wasn't even sure he wanted to punch Koudelka any more. He just wanted to go home and fall asleep piled on the couch with Minkowski and Lovelace, too warm and too close but still his favorite experience since the three of them returned to earth. “I hope you find what you're looking for.”  
   
And he turned around, and walked out the door. Lovelace and Minkowski were waiting for him in the car, and he didn't want to make them sit out there forever.


	3. pt iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the happy chapter. with kissing. all of the kissing.

_“Much, much later, after the three of them had talked about a lot of things and agreed on all of them, well… Lovelace would never forget the look on Minkowski’s face after they’d had sex for the first time, or what she had said. Her face and shoulders had been flushed red, but her eyes were so bright and she was almost crying - in front of Lovelace and Eiffel, another first - and she had whispered, ‘I never thought I’d be glad that I couldn’t remember how it felt when he kissed me.’ ”_  
   
Minkowski had not been going to mention it.   
   
After all, she reasoned, it wasn’t like anything was actually going to happen. The three of them were close, to be sure, but… It had to be all in her head. Minkowski didn’t want to make Lovelace or Eiffel uncomfortable.  
   
But oh Looord was it difficult to remember that when she and Lovelace went jogging together. Lovelace invariably ended up in a sports bra and shorts, and, well. It was a nice view while jogging, was all. And Eiffel had developed this habit of walking around the house shirtless after he took a shower, and Minkowski had _thought_ that she had the best self control out of the three of them.   
   
She did, she reminded herself, otherwise she would not have made it this far. The three of them were, for once, happy and together and not in imminent danger of legal retribution or death from too many different causes. She should sit back and enjoy it.   
   
Minkowski had never been good at that.

* * *

It had been a cold autumn, and Minkowski was curled up under a blanket on the couch reading the Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow. Lovelace had gone out jogging despite the low temperatures, but Eiffel’s promise of hot chocolate if she stayed and dramatic application of the sad kitten face had convinced Minkowski to remain at home this morning.   
   
Fog swirled just outside the window, and Eiffel said something about a silent hill as he walked out of the kitchen.   
   
“If you don’t have hot chocolate you’re not allowed to be here,” Minkowski murmured without taking her eyes off the page.   
   
Eiffel sat down on the couch next to her, the cushions shifting underneath the two of them. “What’s the magic word?”   
   
Minkowski glanced over at him, grinning as happy as ever and holding two mugs. She repressed a grin of her own, shaking her head in mock reproval. “The word is ‘pain’, as in, ‘that thing that will happen to you if you don’t hand over a mug’.”  
   
“See, I’m wise to your tricks. You wouldn’t dare attack me right now because then you might get hot chocolate on your precious book.”   
   
“Is that so?”   
   
“I don’t like that smile, Minkowski.” Eiffel pushed himself to the other end of the couch, watching as Minkowski slowly set down her book. “You don’t wanna get hot chocolate on the couch either, right? _Right?”_  
   
“You gonna hand over the hot chocolate?” she asked, beckoning with one hand. “Don’t make this into another toothpaste situation.”   
   
“That was one time!” Eiffel protested, and in his distraction Minkowski lunged forward to snag a mug out of one of his hands with only a few drops escaping to drip down her hand. She retreated back to her side of the couch to lick the drops off her fingers, confident in her prize. Slightly unsanitary but delicious.   
   
Eiffel was uncharacteristically quiet, and when she glanced up to look at him he wasn’t looking back at her. He was instead staring into his mug, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. There was chocolate on his upper lip, and Minkowski had to remind herself that it was not very professional to want to lick that off.   
   
She really needed to get out more. In the meantime… She nudged Eiffel’s leg with her foot, taking a sip of hot chocolate and then setting her mug down on the table. “Penny for your thoughts?”   
   
He shook his head. “Nothing that valuable. Just…” he trailed off, still smiling.   
   
Minkowski waited, picking up her hot chocolate and taking another sip. Eiffel wasn’t really patient enough to cook regular meals, but the man could make a mean dessert if he put his mind it (and didn’t forget that he had put something in the oven). The hot chocolate was perfect - thick, dark, with a hint of cinnamon.   
   
She looked back up when she heard Eiffel take in a breath as if to speak, but before he could say anything the front door opened and Lovelace entered.   
   
Their house was small, and Minkowski and Eiffel could see Lovelace enter from where they sat on the couch. She dropped her coat and shoes by the door and walked over to the two of them. “Leave anything for me?”  
   
Eiffel shakes his head, pulling the most solemn face he can manage. “I’m sorry, Captain. All stocks of hot chocolate have been…” His face is getting redder, the solemnity of it breaking down into a barely repressed grin. _“Mugged.”_  
   
“Boo!” Lovelace and Minkowski shouted simultaneously.   
   
He smiles. “Tough crowd.”   
   
Lovelace sits on the floor next to him, unclipping her prosthetic from her shoulder and letting it fall to the floor. She reaches upward with her hand, grasping at empty air. Eiffel leans over until they’re making eye contact, Lovelace’s head leaning back against the couch to see him.   
   
“You want something, Cap?”  
   
“Don’t make me ask for it,” Lovelace warns, teasing and light. Minkowski, watching them, feels as though she has been transported back in time. A time before plant monsters and halothane knockout gas, before vast companies and deep space journeys. A time when they were each sad in their own ways but still running, still trying to fight against that deep current dragging them down.   
   
They have to walk now. But they’re still moving.   
   
Eiffel and Lovelace keep teasing each other, light words and unhurried smiles, and a sharp pang of jealous arcs into Minkowski’s chest. It’s obvious in the looks on their faces. Lovelace flicks him on the nose and Eiffel downright giggles and it’s awkward and adorable and Minkowski would do anything to make Eiffel laugh like that again.   
   
But she doesn’t. She can’t. She’s not like them, stodgy Minkowski with her steady voice and solid hands, there in a crisis but never magnetic enough to be asked for once it was over. Lovelace and Eiffel were flint and steel sparking off each other’s light.   
   
Minkowski stands up, and the other two look at her. “I’ll go make you some hot chocolate,” she tells Lovelace.   
   
The act of cooking is soothing. The rhythms of it, the movements, they’re constant in a way few things have been. Milk, powdered mix, a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg. These ingredients haven’t changed in the years they’ve been away.   
   
She can’t hear Eiffel and Lovelace talking anymore.   
   
She does not ask herself if they’re kissing.   
   
If Eiffel is laying back on the couch, Lovelace straddling his hips and holding him down and his head in Minkowski’s lap and Minkowski is leaning down to kiss him now -   
   
“Minkowski!”   
   
She snaps to attention, spinning to face Lovelace standing on the other side of the counter. “You sleeping on the job?” Lovelace asks. She’s raising one eyebrow, one arm folded across her chest and head cocked to one side.   
   
Minkowski shrugs, turning her attention back to the simmering milk on the stove. It’s going to scorch if she doesn’t pay attention to it, the lack of said attention she fully blames on Lovelace and the arch of her bared neck and Eiffel and the way his arms look in a flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.   
   
… God, she’s got it bad.   
   
Lovelace walks into the kitchen, and Minkowski is given no warning before Lovelace drapes herself over Minkowski’s back and peers into the pan in front of them. Her chin is hooked over Minkowski’s shoulder, and Minkowski can feel every move she makes.  
   
“Needs more sugar,” Lovelace says, and Minkowski turns to face her.   
   
“You know you haven’t even tasted it yet, right?”  
   
Lovelace winks. “Don’t need to, Minkowski, I already know everyone could use a little more sugar in their day.”   
   
Minkowski laughs. “You’re ridiculous.”   
“You know you love it.” Lovelace steps back, glancing around their tiny kitchen. White faux-wood and cheap tile floors, the room is nothing special but it belongs to them and them alone. “We have any clean mugs?”   
   
Minkowski nods, trusting that Lovelace remembers where they are. She looks over to check that she found them just in time to see Eiffel pad into the kitchen and walk over to Lovelace.   
   
Lovelace has a mug in her hand, and is listening very intently to something Eiffel is whispering to her.   
   
Minkowski turns back to her milk and adds the cocoa powder. She is not jealous, she is _not jealous._ They’re all great friends and if Lovelace and Eiffel want to be more, that is entirely their decision.   
   
Besides, it’s not like Minkowski has a great track record with relationships at this point. She drops a stick of cinnamon into the mix, lets it simmer down for a few minutes.  
   
Something brushes over the back of her neck, and she shivers in surprise and spins to face the perpetrator.   
   
Eiffel is standing there, too close (not close enough) and already stepping back. “Sorry, sorry, I was going to say something but I didn’t want to scare you, and this is kind of a difficult subject to bring up naturally in a conversation and you know what maybe this is a bad time when there’s food on the stove, and-”   
   
Lovelace cuts him off with a look. She sets her mug down on the counter, takes a step closer to Minkowski.   
   
They’re already very, very close.   
   
“We have an idea,” she says. “Eiffel, come here.” Her voice is confident, unafraid. She stands steady, looking into Minkowski’s eyes like she dares the other woman to back down.   
   
The speed at which Eiffel obeys does not do anything for the heat curling in Minkowski’s stomach and it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.   
   
“Now if Minkowski says yes,” Lovelace continues, “I want you to kiss her.”   
   
Minkowski breaks eye contact with Lovelace because she can’t not look at Eiffel now. There’s red in his cheeks, and the unguarded way he smiles at her hasn’t changed in years. She almost forgets that she has to actually say yes here, and she stumbles over the word. 

“Yes, I - god, yes.” There’s more she should say, Minkowski is certain. More to explain about her complicated past - except they were there for all of it, the three of them through thick and thin and bombs and aliens. She’s stepping into Eiffel before he can make a move, twisting her hands into his hair and kissing him like she hasn’t kissed anyone in years.   
   
He’s smiling almost too much to keep kissing her, and maybe that’s a little her fault because she can’t stop grinning either. Doug Eiffel is like staticky radio playing in a car with the windows all rolled down and the sun shining in, and she could spend the rest of her life singing along.   
   
Minkowski breaks away for a moment to breathe and then she sees Lovelace again, smirking at the two of them and leaning against the kitchen counter.   
   
When Lovelace notices her looking, her smirk only gets wider. “Having fun?”   
   
Fuck self control.   
   
“Get over here,” Minkowski demands, and Lovelace raises an eyebrow.   
   
“You think you can make me?”

Eiffel is watching the two of them, arms loosely around Minkowski’s waist. He’s still flushed, probably even more so than before.   
   
Minkowski wonders how far down that blush goes, and when she makes eye contact with Lovelace she’s pretty sure the other woman is thinking the exact same thing.   
   
“I think you’re plenty capable of making _yourself,”_ she teases, and then pulls Eiffel down into a slow, heated kiss.   
   
She could live and die under Eiffel’s hands, one on her waist still and the other on her neck. He’s so careful with her, like she could break under his touch. (She wonders how much he remembers of their time on the Hephaestus, of all the times either of them were almost broken.)   
   
He shudders, moans into her mouth, and Minkowski looks up to see Lovelace at his back, mouth on the side of his neck.   
   
They make eye contact for a second and there are a thousand unsaid words - how Lovelace and Eiffel have talked about this, how Minkowski goes from 0-100 and she’s been at 100 for a long damn time and Eiffel is tugging Minkowski’s hair back to get access to her throat and she can’t think any longer.   
   
The milk scorches where it sits on the stove.   
   
The three of them are… distracted.


End file.
